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Jimmy Dean had a rule about time. When he said eight o’clock, he meant eight o’clock, and the young guitar player in his band kept treating it like a suggestion. So sometime in the mid-1950s, on the local country music circuit in Washington, D.C., Dean fired him.
Years later, the guitar player didn’t argue the point. Roy Clark told the music writer Rich Kienzle that he “knew I was totally wrong” and that Dean had given him every chance. Then he went out and became one of the most recognizable faces in American television, one of the most admired pickers in Nashville, and, for a quarter century, the man in the overalls who made a cornfield set in Nashville feel like the front porch of the whole country.
That’s the Roy Clark most people remember: the grin, the one-liners, the banjo duels with Buck Owens on Hee Haw. But the grin was only half the story. The other half was a kid from Meherrin, Virginia, who won a national banjo title as a teenager, played a week of shows on a bill headlined by Hank Williams, fronted Wanda Jackson’s band in Las Vegas, sat in the guest-host chair for Johnny Carson, sold out concert halls behind the Iron Curtain, and walked into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
This is the full story, told as carefully as the record allows. Where the sources disagree, and on Roy Clark they disagree more than you might expect, we’ll tell you where and why.
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Who Was Roy Clark?
Roy Linwood Clark was born on April 15, 1933, in Meherrin, Virginia, and died on November 15, 2018, at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at 85. In between, he became one of the few country performers equally famous as a musician and as an entertainer. The Country Music Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 2009, describes a career that ran from Washington, D.C., nightclubs and local television through Capitol Records, network TV, the Las Vegas big rooms and, above all, Hee Haw, which he co-hosted from its June 15, 1969, premiere until the show ended its first-run production in the early 1990s.
He was a guitarist first, and a banjo man close behind, but he could play almost anything with strings and a few things without. He had one No. 1 country single, “Come Live with Me” in 1973, and a string of Top 10 records built around a voice that was warmer than most people expected. He won seven CMA Awards, including Entertainer of the Year in 1973, and a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance for “Alabama Jubilee.”
He also became the face of country music for a generation of Americans who never bought a country record. CMA’s 2018 tribute put his association with Hee Haw at 25 years. Clark himself was clear-eyed about what television had done for him. In a 2005 interview with the Television Academy Foundation, he said that “Television really has been responsible for everything that I’ve done successfully.”
That’s true, and it’s also a little modest. Television made him famous. It took a lifetime of practice to give television something worth broadcasting.
Growing Up in Meherrin, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
Meherrin is a small Southside Virginia community straddling Lunenburg and Prince Edward counties, roughly 65 miles south of Richmond by Rolling Stone’s measure. Roy was the oldest of five children born to Hester Linwood Clark and Lillian Oliver Clark. The Fretboard Journal’s account describes his father as a tobacco farmer and says the family had no electricity in those early years; Clark himself later remembered his father also working at a sawmill and for the B&O Railroad, jobs that moved the family around.
There was music in the house from the beginning. Hester Clark and his brothers played string-band music on the front porch, and his mother played piano, according to the biography cited on Clark’s Wikipedia page. Exactly what Hester played depends on who you ask. The Country Music Hall of Fame says guitar, fiddle and banjo. Rolling Stone says banjo, guitar and mandolin at square dances. Clark himself, in a 2011 oral-history interview with John Erling for Voices of Oklahoma, specified a tenor banjo, not a five-string, along with guitar and mandolin.
For a time during the Depression, the family lived in Great Kills on Staten Island, a detail that comes from the Staten Island Advance and from Bill Kingsbury’s reference work, as cited on Wikipedia. The move that shaped Roy’s life, though, came when his father took a defense job at the Washington Navy Yard during the Second World War.
The year of that move is one of the first places the sources split. The Fretboard Journal puts it in 1942. Wikipedia says Roy was 11, and names the Washington Highlands neighborhood. Rolling Stone says he was 8. Co-op Living, the Virginia electric cooperatives’ magazine, confirms the Navy Yard job and places his teenage years in southeast Washington. What everyone agrees on is the destination: wartime Washington, a city packed with Southern workers who had brought their music north with them.
That mattered more than it might sound. Washington in the 1940s had a thriving country scene, with radio stations, dance halls and a crowd of homesick listeners from Virginia, the Carolinas and the mountains. For a boy who loved string music, it was a better classroom than Meherrin could ever have been.
A Cigar-Box Ukulele, a Sears Silvertone, and a Square-Dance Band
Roy Clark’s first instrument wasn’t much of one. The Oklahoma Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 1982, says he started on a cigar box with a ukulele neck in his elementary school band. NPR’s 2018 obituary says he began on banjo and mandolin before he ever settled on guitar.
The guitar story comes in two versions, and both may be partly true. In the version most obituaries tell, including Variety’s and the Virginia General Assembly’s 2019 memorial resolution, Roy got a Sears Silvertone guitar for Christmas at 14, in 1947. In Rich Kienzle’s more detailed account for the Fretboard Journal, a neighbor named Johnny Schwartz showed Roy a Harmony-made Weymann guitar around 1943 or 1944, and the Silvertone came soon after. Clark himself told John Erling that a neighbor lent him a guitar at about 11.
The neighbor’s guitar has a postscript worth telling. Decades later, Schwartz’s widow and son gave that Weymann to Clark at a concert in South Carolina, and he called it the first guitar he ever touched. Whatever the exact order of events, he was hooked. TravelOK’s Oklahoma Music Trail biography says he soaked his fingers in ice water to ease the soreness from the strings, which is the kind of detail every beginning guitarist recognizes.
His father didn’t just tolerate the obsession; he fed it. Hester Clark took his son to free concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra and the military bands that played around the capital, according to NPR and the Virginia resolution. Clark often repeated a piece of his father’s advice in interviews, which Variety summarized as never turning your ear off to a kind of music until you’d really listened to it.
By 14 or 15, Roy was playing backup guitar in his father’s square-dance band. The Virginia resolution and the Tulsa Historical Society both say his first paid gig earned him two dollars, and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame adds that by 16 he was getting $7.50 for a night with the band. To a teenager in the late 1940s, that was real money for doing the thing he’d have done for free.
School came second. The Oklahoma Hall of Fame says he graduated from Chamberlain Vocational High School in Washington; NPR, Variety and the Tulsa Historical Society all say he dropped out at 15. Clark’s own explanation, as Variety reported it, was that “Music was my salvation, the thing I loved most and did best.” By 16 or 17, he had moved out with two older friends to play music full-time.
Also on Classic Country TV: Clark came up in the era when country music was first finding its way onto local television, and a lot of what aired then was never saved. Here are the rare classic country TV moments that survived. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/10/23/classic-country-tv-rare-moments/
The Banjo Title, the Opry Trip, and a Week With Hank Williams
Here the sources disagree again, and it’s worth slowing down. Every account agrees that Roy Clark won a national banjo title as a teenager and that the win took him to Nashville. They do not agree on when or exactly what the contest was.
Wikipedia, citing a 1985 Billboard interview, says he won the National Banjo Championship in 1947 and again in 1948. NPR, Variety and the Virginia resolution put the win in 1950. The Fretboard Journal gives the most specific version: first prize for banjo at the 1951 National Country Music Contest in Warrenton, Virginia, and second the following year. TravelOK says he won two championships and appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in 1950, at 17. We can’t settle it from here, so we’ll say it plainly: he won a national banjo title as a teenager, and the most detailed account places it at a contest in Warrenton.
The prize, by the Fretboard Journal’s account, was a plaque, a trip to the Opry, and $500. Clark confirmed the $500 to John Erling. What he did with it is the best part of the story. He used the banjo money to help buy a Fender Broadcaster guitar, and told Kienzle years later that he always felt a little guilty about spending banjo winnings on a guitar.
He made his first Opry appearance at 17, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and the folklorist Kip Lornell’s work as cited on Wikipedia. Rolling Stone says he met Uncle Dave Macon and Hank Williams on that trip. The Virginia resolution says the Opry exposure led to shows with Red Foley and Ernest Tubb, and Clark told Erling he spent about a year in Nashville playing Opry road shows afterward.
The Hank Williams connection is real but often inflated. Some obituaries say Clark toured with Williams. The Country Music Hall of Fame is more careful, saying he worked briefly on a show led by Williams. The Fretboard Journal supplies the specifics: in December 1949, booked by promoter Ralph Case, Clark played a week at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre in an Opry stage show headlined by Hank Williams and the Drifting Cowboys. He jammed with the Cowboys’ fiddler Jerry Rivers, and he opened for Williams at Marshall Hall, the riverside amusement park below Washington, where Williams, as Kienzle tells it, told a noisy crowd he wasn’t going to sing until they quieted down.
That’s a remarkable thing to have on a résumé at 16. It’s also a reminder that the country music business of the late 1940s was a small world. A teenage picker from southeast Washington could find himself on the same bill as the biggest star in the genre, provided he could play.
For about 18 months around this time, according to Wikipedia’s summary of the 1985 Billboard interview, Clark toured as a backup guitarist for Opry acts including Stringbean, Annie Lou and Danny, Lonzo and Oscar, and Hal and Velma Smith, earning $150 a week. Clark later recalled playing drive-in theaters with Stringbean, the banjo-playing comedian, standing on top of the projection booth. It was a schooling in showmanship as much as music, and he never forgot it.
By the time he turned 20, the Hall of Fame notes, he had also toured with Grandpa Jones, the banjo-playing comedian who would one day be his castmate on Hee Haw.
Boxing, Baseball, and the Fork in the Road
For a while, music wasn’t the only thing pulling at him. The Oklahoma Hall of Fame says that at 19 Roy Clark won 15 straight light-heavyweight boxing matches. The Fretboard Journal places those fights in a local police-sponsored league and says he was good enough to consider turning pro. Rolling Stone gives a slightly different record, 15 wins and one loss, in bouts in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
What ended the boxing career was a tougher opponent and the sight of his own blood. After that night, as Clark told Kienzle, he looked at his guitar a little more seriously.
Baseball nearly took him too. The Oklahoma Hall of Fame says he was offered a tryout with the St. Louis Browns at 18. Clark told John Erling he played the outfield and was consumed by the game, and that a scout offered him a tryout in Florida. He didn’t go. The Fretboard Journal says he couldn’t afford the train fare to camp; Clark’s own explanation to Erling was simply that he couldn’t take the chance. Neither the scout’s name nor the exact year turns up in the record.
It’s easy to treat these stories as trivia, but they say something about the man. Roy Clark was a natural athlete and a competitor, and he chose music anyway, at a time when a steady paycheck in any field would have been easier to find. The same competitive streak shows up later in the way he played: fast, fearless, and always a little bit showing off.
Why Did Jimmy Dean Fire Roy Clark?
To understand the firing, you have to understand the scene. In postwar Washington, the most important figure in country music wasn’t a singer. It was Connie B. Gay, a promoter and broadcaster who, as the Country Music Hall of Fame’s biography explains, built the capital’s country scene starting in 1946 at radio station WARL. “Town and Country” was Gay’s brand, stamped across radio programs, television shows and stage packages. He managed Jimmy Dean, and his roster also included Patsy Cline, who made her television debut on Gay’s shows, and George Hamilton IV.
Roy Clark was part of that world. The Hall of Fame says he appeared on Gay’s Town and Country Time broadcasts and at his concerts. He had first met Jimmy Dean in 1949, he told Erling, when Dean was in the Air Force at Bolling Field, and around 1954 Dean hired him into his band, the Texas Wildcats, at $150 a week.
The show’s history moved fast. According to Wikipedia’s account of Dean’s career, Town and Country Time began on WARL radio in 1954, moved to weekday afternoons on WMAL-TV in 1955, and spun off a Saturday Town and Country Jamboree. By 1957 Dean had a show on WTOP-TV that CBS carried nationally for part of that year. The Washingtonian, looking back after Dean’s death in 2010, described Town and Country as Washington’s answer to the Grand Ole Opry and listed Clark and Cline together among its local talent.
How close Clark and Cline actually were in those years isn’t documented in any detail. CMA’s 2018 obituary says he shared stages with Jimmy Dean and Patsy Cline, and that’s as far as the record goes. There’s no specific anecdote, no dated performance, and we won’t invent one.
The firing itself is well documented, even if its date isn’t. Dean let Clark go for chronic lateness and replaced him with Billy Grammer, according to both Wikipedia’s Dean biography and the Fretboard Journal. Kienzle dates it to 1955; Wikipedia’s Clark biography, citing the Comprehensive Country Music Encyclopedia, says 1957; and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame says Clark toured with Dean’s band for two years. Saving Country Music reports a line often attributed to Dean, that Clark was the most talented person he ever fired, but no primary source for it turns up, so treat it as legend rather than record.
Clark’s own accounts are what make the story worth telling. He never painted himself as the victim. To Kienzle he said he knew he was totally wrong. To John Erling, he put it in Dean’s terms, recalling that “when he said 8 o’clock he meant 8 o’clock.” And the two men stayed friends. A few years later it would be Jimmy Dean who put Roy Clark on network television.
There’s one more wrinkle. NPR and the Associated Press both report that Clark later took over as host of Dean’s Washington program when Dean moved on to New York. That sits a little uneasily with the firing story, and the sequence isn’t clear from the sources. Both things may be true at different points in the mid-1950s; a fired sideman becoming the host of the same franchise would not be the strangest thing that ever happened in local television.
When he said 8 o’clock he meant 8 o’clock.
Roy Clark, on Jimmy Dean, to John Erling for Voices of Oklahoma, 2011
Arthur Godfrey, George Hamilton IV, and the Last Washington Years
Clark’s first taste of network television came in 1956, when he placed second on CBS’s Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, according to Wikipedia’s summary of the 1985 Billboard interview. The Fretboard Journal adds context: Clark had backed Marvin Rainwater on his 1955 Godfrey win, and Rainwater’s brother, who managed him, pitched Clark to the show. The program’s talent coordinator steered him away from his rowdier material, and he ended up playing “Blue Suede Shoes,” a song Kienzle says he didn’t want to play.
The rockabilly assignment turned out to be good practice. Clark was a working musician in a city where the line between country, rockabilly and pop was getting blurrier every month, and he could cover all of it. A fan-compiled session database credits him with guitar on Marvin Rainwater’s first session in Washington in January 1953, and Wikipedia says he cut early singles for Coral and 4 Star, though the details of those records are thin.
In the spring of 1959 he was a regular on George Hamilton IV’s short-lived Washington television series, according to Wikipedia’s Billboard-sourced account. By then his personal life had changed too. A first marriage, to Ruby Conley in 1954, produced a son, Roy Linwood Clark Jr., and ended in divorce in 1957. On August 31, 1957, he married Barbara Joyce Rupard, and they stayed married for the rest of his life, 61 years.
Then he left Washington, and according to Wikipedia’s citation of Lornell, he never lived there again. The next stop was Las Vegas.
Wanda Jackson, the Golden Nugget, and the Rockabilly Years
In 1960, Roy Clark joined Wanda Jackson’s band, became its leader, recorded with her, and opened her shows at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame. The Virginia General Assembly’s 2019 resolution calls the invitation to open for Jackson his big break. Clark, telling the story to John Erling, said Jackson asked him to front her band for a Las Vegas date and that he adapted his style to rockabilly to fit her.
It’s worth remembering how unusual that booking was. Clark told Erling the Golden Nugget was one of the very few casinos that played country music at the time. The Oklahoma Historical Society’s entry on Jackson notes that she began getting Las Vegas offers in early 1960 and remained a favorite of the city’s nightclubs into the early 1970s. Her band was called the Party Timers.
The records they made together are the best evidence of how good Clark already was. On October 28, 1960, at Owen Bradley’s studio in Nashville, with Capitol producer Ken Nelson in charge, Clark played the guitar solo on Jackson’s “Funnel of Love,” according to Wikipedia’s account of the session. The same session is credited for her Right or Wrong album, with Clark listed among the backing musicians alongside Buck Owens, the Bakersfield guitarist who would one day stand beside him in a Hee Haw cornfield. uDiscover Music, writing about Jackson’s There’s a Party Goin’ On LP from 1961, singled out Clark’s guitar work across the album.
Las Vegas also brought him into the orbit of Hank Penny, the Western swing bandleader who held down a long residency at the Golden Nugget. Wikipedia says Clark moved to Las Vegas in 1960 and worked in Penny’s band; the Fretboard Journal says he joined Penny in 1961. Kienzle reports that Clark called Penny the funniest man he’d ever seen onstage, and it isn’t hard to see where some of Clark’s own stage timing came from.
One more detail from Kienzle’s account says a lot about the life of a working guitarist in 1961. When Clark’s Les Paul was stolen that year, he borrowed a Gibson ES-335 from his old banjo teacher, Smitty Irvin, and kept playing.
Jim Halsey and the Capitol Records Deal
The single most important business decision of Roy Clark’s life came around this time, and it involved a young booking agent from Oklahoma. Jim Halsey had founded his agency in December 1951 and taken on Wanda Jackson in 1956, according to Wikipedia’s history of the Jim Halsey Co. He took on Clark around 1959 or 1960 and managed him, by News 9 in Oklahoma City’s count, for 59 years.
When exactly they met is unsettled. News 9’s 2018 interview with Halsey puts it in November 1959, when Clark was 26. Clark himself told John Erling he met Halsey, who was Wanda’s manager, during the Jackson engagements of 1960. NPR says that after Jackson’s band broke up, Clark savvily hired her old manager. All three versions agree on the outcome: Halsey became the architect of Clark’s career, lining up the television appearances that made him a national name.
The Capitol Records contract came the same way. In October 1960, while Jackson’s band was in Nashville to record, Ken Nelson offered Clark a deal of his own, according to Kienzle. Clark told Erling that Nelson said he’d have to sign him as an instrumentalist. The Hall of Fame and CMA date the signing to 1960; the Associated Press said 1962. We follow the Hall of Fame.
Capitol released the debut album, The Lightning Fingers of Roy Clark, in 1962 by most accounts; Kienzle says it was recorded in Hollywood in late 1961. Rolling Stone’s song list for it includes “Golden Slippers,” “In the Mood” and a run of twist instrumentals, including “Texas Twist,” which had been his first Capitol single and, in CMA’s dry phrase, failed to ignite any fires. Over the next several years Capitol put out Roy Clark Sings the Tip of My Fingers, Happy to Be Unhappy, The Roy Clark Guitar Spectacular!, Roy Clark Sings Lonesome Love Ballads and Stringing Along with the Blues, according to his discography.
Notice the word “Sings” in some of those titles. Capitol had signed an instrumentalist and, almost immediately, found itself with a singer.
The Song That Made Him a Singer: “The Tip of My Fingers”
Bill Anderson wrote “The Tip of My Fingers” and recorded it first, in 1960. In 1963, Roy Clark’s version became his first charting single, reaching No. 10 on the country chart and No. 45 on the pop chart, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame and the song’s chart history. The title gets printed both ways, “Tip” and “Tips,” depending on the source; the original album and the discography use “Tip.”
Two common errors about the record are worth correcting. CMA’s 2018 obituary called it his duet with Bill Anderson; no other source describes a duet, and Anderson’s role was as songwriter. A Brown County, Indiana, newspaper once claimed the song topped the country and pop charts. It didn’t. A Top 10 country hit and a mid-chart pop placement were plenty for a man Capitol had signed to play guitar.
Clark understood what had happened, even if the industry didn’t yet have a word for it. As Variety reported, he later said that nobody called it crossover then, but he guessed that’s what it was. Steve Wariner would take the same song to No. 3 country in 1992, which Rolling Stone noted as part of Clark’s long influence on the guitar-playing singers who followed him.
The follow-ups were modest. “Through the Eyes of a Fool” reached No. 31 in 1964 and “When the Wind Blows in Chicago” No. 37 in 1965, according to his discography, and CMA notes that Clark didn’t return to the Top 10 for six years. What kept his career moving in the meantime wasn’t radio. It was television.
The Tonight Show, Jimmy Dean’s Phone Call, and the Guest-Host Chair
The man who fired Roy Clark is the man who got him on The Tonight Show. In the Fretboard Journal’s telling, Jimmy Dean found Clark playing a club in Safford, Arizona, and booked him on the show while Dean was guest-hosting. Clark flew in and met Dean just before the 5 p.m. taping, and Dean arranged for two songs, with two more if those went over. Clark told John Erling that Dean was filling in during the gap between Jack Paar and Johnny Carson.
That timeline fits the record. The CTVA episode guide shows Jimmy Dean guest-hosting Tonight the week of July 9, 1962, during the interim between Paar and Carson, though its guest listings don’t name Clark. Other sources date Clark’s network debut on the show differently: Wikipedia mentions both an early-1960 appearance and a January 1963 solo debut, and Variety says 1963. The best-supported reading is that Dean put him on the air in the summer of 1962.
Once he was on, he kept getting invited back. Wikipedia’s Carson episode lists show him as a musical guest four times in 1965 alone. Later, he sat in the host’s chair himself. The episode lists show Clark guest-hosting The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson at least a dozen times between 1974 and 1977, sometimes for several nights in a row, and HITS Daily Double put his total at more than 15 guest-host spots in the 1970s. Several sources, including the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, call him the first country artist to guest-host for Carson. Rolling Stone’s claim that he was the show’s first-ever guest host doesn’t hold up; that distinction belongs to Jimmy Dean, in January 1963.
Clark’s own memory of the job was funny and a little rueful. His first guest as host, he told Erling, was Bob Hope, and that was when he learned just how hot that seat is.
The network exposure spread in every direction. He appeared on ABC’s The Jimmy Dean Show, which ran from 1963 to 1966; a fan-compiled database lists a 1964 appearance in which he played “Alabama Jubilee,” the tune that would win him a Grammy nearly two decades later. In 1966 he co-hosted NBC’s daytime Swingin’ Country with Molly Bee and Rusty Draper. His Television Academy interview also covers appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and on The Jonathan Winters Show, a stop that led more or less directly to Hee Haw.
Clark described his role on some of those 1960s variety shows with typical self-deprecation, telling Variety he was the token bumpkin. He wasn’t wrong about how network television saw country music in those years. What’s remarkable is how completely he used that role to his own advantage.
Watch on Classic Country TV: Hear Roy Clark in his own words in an interview recorded before the American Eagle Awards, with our commentary and historical context.
Cousin Roy and His Mother on The Beverly Hillbillies
Of all his 1960s television, nothing showed Clark’s comic range like The Beverly Hillbillies. He played Cousin Roy, a relative of the Clampett clan, and in a bit of casting that still makes fans grin, he also played Roy’s mother, in drag. The Country Music Hall of Fame names the mother Myrtle; other accounts call her Mother Myrtle Halsey or Big Mama Halsey. The Halsey surname was an inside joke on his manager, as Wide Open Country explains.
The episode records confirm at least three appearances: “Cousin Roy,” which aired April 3, 1968, and “Jethro the Flesh Peddler” and “Cousin Roy in Movieland,” which aired January 22 and January 29, 1969. Wikipedia’s filmography lists five Cousin Roy episodes; the other two are unconfirmed elsewhere. MeTV reports that series creator Paul Henning wrote the part with Clark in mind, and quotes Clark recalling that “Donna Douglas was my first TV kiss.”
It’s a small chapter, but an important one. A guitar virtuoso who could play a hillbilly mother in a housedress for laughs on one of the most popular rural comedies on television was exactly the kind of performer two Canadian producers were about to go looking for.
“Yesterday, When I Was Young” and the Turning Point
By 1968 Clark had moved from Capitol to Dot Records; his 1968 albums Do You Believe This Roy Clark and Urban, Suburban were Dot releases, according to his discography, though the exact date of the move isn’t documented. At Dot, he found the song that changed how people heard him. Wikipedia credits Joe Allison, who ran Dot’s country department in those years, with producing it, though we couldn’t confirm that elsewhere.
“Yesterday, When I Was Young” didn’t come from Nashville at all. It began as “Hier encore,” a French song with music by Georges Garvarentz and lyrics by Charles Aznavour, released in 1964. Herbert Kretzmer, the English lyricist who later wrote the words for Les Misérables, wrote the English version. It’s a song about an older man looking back on a life spent carelessly, and it asked something of a singer that “The Tip of My Fingers” never did.
Clark’s version reached No. 9 on the country chart in August 1969 and No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was his only Top 40 pop hit. It went to No. 6 on the adult contemporary chart and did even better in Canada, where RPM ranked it No. 7 on its main singles chart, No. 2 country, and No. 1 adult contemporary. The album of the same name reached No. 8 on the country albums chart and No. 50 on the Billboard 200.
Clark wrote in his 1994 autobiography, My Life—In Spite of Myself!, that the song opened a lot of people’s eyes, as the Associated Press reported. That’s exactly what it did. Until then, much of the country thought of Roy Clark as the fast-fingered guy who cracked jokes between solos. “Yesterday, When I Was Young” proved he could stand still at a microphone and break your heart.
The song stayed with him for the rest of his life. When Mickey Mantle was dying in 1995, he asked Clark to sing it at his memorial, and Clark did, according to the AP. Clark sang it again at his own Country Music Hall of Fame induction in 2009.
The timing was almost too neat. The record was climbing the charts in the summer of 1969, just as CBS was rolling out a summer replacement series that nobody in network television expected much from.
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Get All 6 Volumes Free →How Did Hee Haw Start?
Hee Haw premiered on CBS on June 15, 1969, as the summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which the network had cancelled after a long fight with its censors, according to Wikipedia’s history of the series. The show was created by two Canadian writer-producers, Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth. Clark described it to NPR in 2016 as an idea from two Canadians, modeled on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.
The format was simple and fast. Instead of Laugh-In‘s psychedelic party, Hee Haw set its rapid-fire jokes in a fictional rural community called Kornfield Kounty, with corn-stalk pop-ups, a general store, a barbershop, and a hayloft full of one-liners, cut together with real country performances. It was taped in Nashville, at WLAC-TV, the station now known as WTVF, from 1969 to 1982, and then at Studio A at the Grand Ole Opry House complex until 1993.
Roy Clark and Buck Owens were its hosts from the first episode. CMA dates Clark’s association to that June 15, 1969, premiere and puts its length at 25 years. MusicRow, announcing his Hall of Fame election in 2009, said he never missed an episode.
It’s hard to overstate what that meant for country music in the late 1960s. Network television had plenty of rural comedy, but very little real country music performed by real country musicians. Hee Haw put Buck Owens, the most successful honky-tonk star of the decade, and Roy Clark, the hottest picker on network TV, in American living rooms every week, and it surrounded them with guests who otherwise might never have gotten near a network camera.
Clark knew exactly what the show did for him. He told the Associated Press, as NBC News reported, that “This put my face and name together.” Before Hee Haw, plenty of people had seen him. After it, everyone knew who he was.
Also on Classic Country TV: Hee Haw is one of the 10 classic country TV shows every fan should remember, including the hit CBS cancelled for being too country. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/10/21/10-classic-country-music-television-shows/
Pickin’ and Grinnin’ With Buck Owens
The segment everyone remembers lasted only a minute or two. Buck Owens would start a line on guitar, Roy Clark would answer on banjo, and the two of them would trade licks and one-liners until the whole thing collapsed into laughter, with Owens singing “I’m a-pickin'” and Clark coming back with “and I’m a-grinnin’.” Wikipedia’s history of the show describes it as a recurring duel built on exactly that formula.
On paper, the pairing was unusual. Owens was the hard-edged king of the Bakersfield Sound, a bandleader who’d spent most of the 1960s at the top of the country chart with a sound built on twanging Telecasters and a tight road band. Clark was the versatile Washington-and-Vegas entertainer who could play jazz, flamenco and bluegrass in the same set. Put them side by side on bales of hay, though, and they made something neither could have made alone: a picture of country music that was skilled, funny and completely unpretentious.
The music on Hee Haw went well beyond the hosts. Clark sang in the Hee Haw Gospel Quartet with Owens, Grandpa Jones and Kenny Price, according to CMA, and he played in the show’s Million Dollar Band, an all-star lineup that included Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer, Jethro Burns, Boots Randolph, Johnny Gimble, Charlie McCoy and Danny Davis. For a few minutes at a time, a syndicated comedy show assembled one of the finest country bands ever put on television.
The comedy was a group effort too, and Clark was generous about the people he shared the cornfield with. Recalling the sketches with Junior Samples, the Georgia sawmill worker turned cast member, he told the Country Music Hall of Fame that Samples would blow a line and it would be hilarious. That generosity was part of the show’s secret. Nobody on Hee Haw was trying too hard to look smarter than the audience.
Also on Classic Country TV: Before Hee Haw, Buck Owens was the biggest hitmaker in country music, including a record that held No. 1 for 16 straight weeks. Read that story in This Week in Country Music History. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/10/19/this-week-in-country-music-history-october-19/
CBS Cancelled Hee Haw, and It Got Bigger
In July 1971, CBS cancelled Hee Haw along with a whole slate of rural-themed shows, in what became known as the network’s rural purge. As the rural purge is usually told, the problem wasn’t the ratings; CBS wanted a younger, more urban audience, and cornfields didn’t fit the plan. The Country Music Hall of Fame puts it simply: CBS dropped the show after two seasons, and it became even more popular in syndication.
The producers took Hee Haw straight into first-run syndication, selling it station by station, and it ran that way for more than two decades. Gaylord Entertainment bought Yongestreet Productions, the company behind the show, in 1981, according to Wikipedia.
Buck Owens left in 1986. Clark stayed, hosting alongside a rotating lineup of celebrity co-hosts and carrying the show into a retooled format called Hee Haw Silver in its final season. Exactly when it ended depends on how you count: Wikipedia says first-run production ended in the summer of 1992 and the series concluded in June 1993; Rolling Stone and Premier Guitar say 1992; the AP said the last episode aired in 1993. The episode count is just as unsettled, with figures ranging from NPR’s 585 to the more than 600 cited elsewhere.
Clark loved the show and didn’t apologize for it. When critics dismissed Hee Haw as cornpone, his answer to NPR was that the cast wasn’t hurting anybody, they were out there having a good time. He told the AP in 2004 that “‘Hee Haw’ won’t go away. It brings a smile to too many faces.” And to Rolling Stone he offered the line that may sum up his whole career: “I grew old on Hee Haw, but I could’ve grown old without it.”
He was right that it wouldn’t go away. Reruns aired on TNN in the mid-1990s, on RFD-TV from 2008 to 2020, on the Circle network after that, and on RFD-TV again starting in May 2024, according to Wikipedia’s broadcast history.
Also on Classic Country TV: Hee Haw found a second life in reruns on TNN. Here’s the story of the cable era that kept classic country on television from 1983 to 2000. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/10/28/best-old-country-music-tv-shows/
The Hits: “Come Live with Me,” “Thank God and Greyhound” and More
Hee Haw didn’t just make Clark famous; it made him a reliable hitmaker for the first time. The run that followed “Yesterday, When I Was Young” is worth laying out, because it’s longer and better than many people remember. All chart figures here come from his Billboard discography as compiled on Wikipedia.
“I Never Picked Cotton” reached No. 5 country in 1970. That same year, “Thank God and Greyhound,” a wry kiss-off song about a woman leaving on the bus, went to No. 6 country and crossed onto the Hot 100. In 1972, the novelty “The Lawrence Welk–Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka” made No. 9, a song whose title alone tells you how much fun he was having.
Then came his biggest record. “Come Live with Me” went to No. 1 on the country chart in 1973, the only country No. 1 of his career, as uDiscover Music noted in its obituary. It was followed the same year by “Somewhere Between Love and Tomorrow,” which reached No. 2. “Honeymoon Feelin'” made No. 4 in 1974, and “If I Had to Do It All Over Again” went to No. 2 in 1976, which Rolling Stone called his last major hit.
Counting it all up depends on the counter. uDiscover credits him with 24 Top 40 country singles, nine of them Top 10, and 28 albums on the country chart. MusicRow and the Virginia legislature give 23 Top 40 hits and eight Top 10s. Either way, it’s the record of a working country star, not a novelty act who happened to play guitar.
The instrumentals deserve their own mention, because that’s where his reputation among musicians was built. He recorded “Malagueña,” the Spanish classical showpiece, on 12-string guitar, and it became a signature in concert even though it never charted. In 1978 he and banjo player Buck Trent released the duet album Banjo Bandits, which reached No. 45 on the country albums chart. The pairing with Trent also won him two of his CMA Awards.
Entertainer of the Year: The CMA, the ACM and the Grammy
The awards came quickly once Hee Haw was on the air. CMA’s 2018 tribute lists seven CMA Awards: Comedian of the Year in 1970, Entertainer of the Year in 1973, Instrumental Group of the Year with Buck Trent in 1975 and 1976, and Instrumentalist of the Year in 1977, 1978 and 1980.
The Academy of Country Music named him Entertainer of the Year twice, at its awards ceremonies on February 26, 1973, and March 25, 1974. Most sources call those the 1972 and 1973 awards, reflecting the award years rather than the ceremony dates. He also received the ACM’s Pioneer Award later in life, though no source we found gives the year.
His Grammy came for “Alabama Jubilee,” which won Best Country Instrumental Performance at the 25th Grammy Awards, held in 1983, according to the Recording Academy’s own records, which list him alone on the credit. Some sources date the win to 1982, the year of the eligible recording, and others to 1983, the year of the ceremony. Over his career he received eight Grammy nominations by the Academy’s count, including The Entertainer, Banjo Bandits, “Wildwood Flower,” “Kaw-Liga” with the jazz guitarist Joe Pass, and an album of gospel standards in 2000. NPR’s obituary counted seven.
The 1973 CMA win stands out because of what it says about the industry’s view of him. Entertainer of the Year is the CMA’s top prize, and in 1973 it went to a man whose most famous job was co-hosting a comedy show. It was Nashville admitting, publicly, that what Clark did on stage was the whole package.
Also on Classic Country TV: The CMA Awards were only six years old when Clark won Entertainer of the Year. Here’s what really happened at the first CMA Awards in Nashville on October 20, 1967. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/10/13/first-cma-awards-1967-history/
Taking Country Music to the Soviet Union in 1976
The trip Roy Clark called the highlight of his career, according to the Tulsa Historical Society, began with a news report on a hotel television in Las Vegas. As Jim Halsey told KGOU public radio in 2023, he and Clark were at the Frontier Hotel when they saw a story about Soviet dignitaries visiting the United States, and they invited them to Clark’s show. Halsey then approached the State Department’s cultural exchange program, and negotiations for a tour began in 1974.
When the tour finally came together in 1976, it made Clark one of the first American artists to play the Soviet Union, in the Country Music Hall of Fame’s phrasing. CMA says the Oak Ridge Boys went along as the opening act and that the tour helped launch their career. Rolling Stone says the shows included Moscow’s Rossiya Theatre.
Halsey’s account of the arrival is the kind of detail no press release would include. Moscow was 28 below zero when they landed, he told KGOU, and at the last minute the first concert was moved to Riga, Latvia, a 12-hour train ride away. He remembered Clark turning to him at the airport and asking, as KGOU quoted him, “Halsey, what have you gotten us into?” About 3,000 people came each night, Halsey said, and the shows were broadcast across the Soviet bloc.
The number of concerts depends on the teller. Halsey, via KGOU, described Riga plus 19 more. Public Radio Tulsa reported 21 shows over three weeks. Clark himself told John Erling there were 18 sold-out shows. The exact dates of the tour aren’t documented in the sources we found, and one Tulsa account even places it a couple of years later than 1976; we follow the Hall of Fame’s date.
What everyone agrees on is the effect. Halsey told Public Radio Tulsa that “We saw the whole attitude of the Soviets change toward Americans.” The CMA named Clark an international friendship ambassador the same year, according to Wikipedia, and he went back to the Soviet Union in 1988 on a tour that became a television documentary.
There’s something fitting about it. The man who’d been the token bumpkin on 1960s variety shows ended up as one of country music’s first ambassadors to the other side of the Cold War, and he did it by doing exactly what he did on Hee Haw: playing brilliantly and making people laugh.
Also on Classic Country TV: The Oak Ridge Boys opened for Clark behind the Iron Curtain in 1976. Read the full story of the group, and of Richard Sterban’s fight with cancer. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/11/01/oak-ridge-boys-richard-sterban-complete-story/
Vegas, Carnegie Hall and Branson: Roy Clark on the Road
For all his television fame, Clark made most of his living in front of live audiences, and his live résumé was unusually broad. The Country Music Hall of Fame says he played the big rooms in Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Tahoe and Atlantic City. The Oklahoma Hall of Fame calls him the first country artist to headline a major Las Vegas hotel, though it doesn’t name the hotel. MusicRow’s 2018 obituary adds that he co-starred with Petula Clark at Caesars Palace, played Carnegie Hall, and was the first country artist to headline the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.
He worked with orchestras as easily as with bluegrass bands. Wikipedia notes a 1976 performance with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, and a July 4, 1984, concert in Washington, D.C., his old hometown, for a crowd estimated at more than half a million people. The Tulsa Historical Society says he was the first country artist inducted into the Las Vegas Entertainers Hall of Fame.
Then he helped invent Branson. In 1983, the Roy Clark Celebrity Theatre opened in Branson, Missouri, and he became the first country star with his own venue there, according to the Tulsa Historical Society. Family RVing Magazine called it the first theater in town linked to a celebrity entertainer, and the model it established, a big-name star playing his own room for tourists who drove in from across the Midwest, became the template for the whole Ozarks entertainment industry. HITS Daily Double dates the opening to 1982; Wikipedia says Clark sold the theater in 1992, while HITS says he performed there regularly through 1996. The building later became the Hughes Brothers Theatre.
Clark’s description of Branson, as he gave it to John Erling, was characteristically blunt: it was Las Vegas without the gambling. He meant it as a compliment. He’d spent his early career in Vegas lounges, and he understood better than most how to give a crowd that had traveled a long way their money’s worth.
One of his signature stage lines, which MusicRow recalled in his obituary, captured the attitude perfectly. He’d thank the audience by reminding them that “We had to come, but you had a choice.”
Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Man Who Gave Away Guitars
In 1974, Roy and Barbara Clark moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, the home base of Jim Halsey’s agency, according to Premier Guitar and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Tulsa would be home for the rest of his life. He told the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1994 that “I’m glad I adopted Oklahoma and Oklahoma adopted me.”
The city took him seriously as a neighbor. Roy Clark Elementary School in the Union district was dedicated in 1978, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Route 66 News. He supported Tulsa’s Children’s Medical Center and helped bring the Tulsa Drillers minor-league baseball team to town in 1977, fitting for a man who’d once turned down a Browns tryout. Oklahoma named him its Music Ambassador for Children, and the Oklahoma House of Representatives honored him in April 2011, according to Wikipedia. Even his airplane went to a good cause: the 1953 Piper Tri-Pacer he’d owned for decades was raffled off for the charity Wings of Hope in 2012.
His generosity extended to other musicians, and some of the stories are still told in Nashville. When the 2010 Nashville flood destroyed most of Brad Paisley’s guitar collection, Clark gave him a guitar, as Paisley recalled after Clark’s death in comments reported by NewsChannel 5. Paisley’s tribute was four words long and needed no explaining: “Constantly giving. I owe him so much.”
The memorial service in 2018 was full of stories like that. Ricky Skaggs recalled Clark’s encouragement to keep doing what he was doing, according to KTUL, and Jim Halsey described him as a rare combination of talent and generosity. That combination is the thread that runs through every part of his life.
The Grand Ole Opry in 1987 and the Hall of Fame in 2009
For all his success, Roy Clark’s official place in Nashville’s institutions came relatively late. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry on August 22, 1987, the Opry’s 63rd member, according to MusicRow. Who inducted him isn’t recorded in the sources we found, and the Opry’s own site couldn’t be reached to confirm it. What matters is that the kid who’d made his first Opry appearance at 17 finally belonged there.
The Country Music Hall of Fame came two decades later. On February 4, 2009, the Country Music Association announced its new class: Roy Clark, Barbara Mandrell and the harmonica player Charlie McCoy, with Clark elected in the category covering careers that began between World War II and 1975, according to MusicRow. The medallion ceremony on May 17, 2009, was a family affair in the broadest sense. Little Jimmy Dickens inducted him. Josh Turner sang “Thank God and Greyhound.” Garth Brooks, Clark’s Tulsa neighbor, sang “Come Live with Me.” And Clark himself played “Yesterday, When I Was Young.”
His speech was short. As MusicRow reported, he closed with “Thanks to all of you. And thanks to God.” For a man who’d spent his life entertaining, it was a remarkably quiet moment, and it fit him.
The honors weren’t limited to Nashville. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1982, the Tulsa Hall of Fame in 2011, the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame in 2007, and the Gibson Guitar Hall of Fame. He became a founding inductee of the Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2013, and he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the television category, at 6912 Hollywood Boulevard, on February 12, 1975. In 1999, TNN and Music City News gave him the Minnie Pearl Humanitarian of the Year Award.
Also on Classic Country TV: Clark joined the Grand Ole Opry the year after Reba McEntire did. Here’s her 40-year story on the stage she still calls home. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/10/23/reba-mcentire-40-years-grand-ole-opry/
Was Roy Clark Really One of the Best Guitar Players in Country Music?
Yes, and the people who’d know said so loudest. The reputation didn’t come from critics or chart numbers. It came from other guitar players, many of whom first saw a guitar played seriously on a Saturday night when Hee Haw came on.
The tributes after his death read like a roll call of country guitar. Keith Urban said his first CMA Awards memory was watching Roy Clark tear it up, according to NewsChannel 5, and Travis Tritt called Clark’s guitar and banjo picking an inspiration. Brad Paisley asked how many guitar players had started out with a Roy Clark method book, as Premier Guitar reported. The rock guitarist John 5 was even more direct, telling Premier Guitar that “The reason I play guitar is because of Hee Haw and Roy Clark.”
What made him special was range. He could play a Bill Monroe breakdown on banjo, a jazz standard on a hollow-body electric, “Malagueña” on a 12-string, and a rockabilly solo behind Wanda Jackson, and he could do all of it at speeds that made audiences laugh out loud. Premier Guitar’s tribute catalogs the instruments: semi-hollow electrics, Telecasters, a Fender Jaguar in a late-1950s clip, Les Pauls, and the signature model he helped design for Heritage Guitars, which he described in a 2010 NAMM oral history. He also endorsed Mosrite and Gretsch guitars over the years.
He was candid about where he’d learned. Quoted by Billboard in 1985, as cited on Wikipedia, he said that when he was coming up on banjo, you didn’t have many choices to follow, and Earl Scruggs was both of them. That’s a joke with a lot of truth in it, and it’s the kind of credit a lesser player might not have given.
The one knock on him, from purists, was that the comedy got in the way of the musicianship. There’s something to that. On Hee Haw, the picking was often cut short for the punchline, and a casual viewer could easily miss how good he was. But Clark understood the trade-off better than his critics did. His explanation, as the American Banjo Museum quoted him, was that “I learned comedy as a self-defense mechanism.” The jokes got people to listen. Then the playing kept them listening.
That influence was on full display at the 50th CMA Awards in 2016, when Clark, at 83, played banjo in a medley with Brad Paisley, who’d dressed up as Buck Owens for the occasion. Rolling Stone counted it among his great live performances. Fifty years after Hee Haw began, the younger generation was still dressing up as his co-host just to share a stage with him.
Also on Classic Country TV: Roy Clark wasn’t the only Nashville picker who made people laugh and made guitarists jealous at the same time. Meet Jerry Reed, the Guitar Man who redefined Nashville twice over. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/07/10/jerry-reed-guitar-man-artist-deep-dive/
Roy Clark’s Death and the Tulsa Farewell
Roy Clark died on Thursday, November 15, 2018, at his home in Tulsa, from complications of pneumonia. He was 85. His publicist, Jeremy Westby, confirmed the death to the Associated Press. One widely circulated report gave the date as November 14; that was an error.
It had been a hard autumn for the family. MusicRow reported that Clark’s 14-year-old grandson, Elijah Clark, had died in September 2018. Clark was survived by Barbara, his wife of 61 years; by his children Roy Clark II, Dr. Michael Meyer, Terry Lee Meyer, Susan Mosier and Diane Stewart; by grandchildren; and by his sister, Susan Coryell.
The public said goodbye on November 21, 2018, at a celebration of life at Rhema Bible Church in Broken Arrow, just outside Tulsa, according to Public Radio Tulsa and KJRH. Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs and Larry Gatlin performed, the church’s pastor, Kenneth Hagin, prayed, and Jim Halsey, Clark’s manager for nearly six decades, gave the eulogy. The family asked for donations to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. KTUL reported Gill’s affectionate claim that Clark could play a little boogie-woogie with his big toe, and Gatlin’s memory of a man who never complained about the road and couldn’t wait to get back out on it. Public Radio Tulsa reported that the service closed with video of Clark playing “Malagueña.”
The tributes from Nashville were warm and immediate. Dolly Parton told KTUL that “Roy Clark was one of the greatest ever. His spirit will never die.” The Oak Ridge Boys, whose career had gotten a lift from that Soviet tour, called him a friend, brother and mentor, according to Fox News. And CMA’s chief executive, Sarah Trahern, said she would always smile thinking of him pickin’ and grinnin’.
The Virginia General Assembly memorialized him in 2019 in Senate Joint Resolution 409, which also notes a scholarship in his name at Longwood University, not far from where he was born.
Roy Clark Way and the Roy Clark Archive in 2026
Eight years after his death, Tulsa is still finding ways to keep Roy Clark in the room. In late August 2026, The Church Studio, the restored Tulsa recording studio once owned by Leon Russell, became the permanent home of the Roy Clark Archive, donated by Barbara Clark, according to The Country Note and MusicRow. The collection includes photographs, awards, posters, personal papers, stage and television wardrobe, memorabilia, and many of his stringed instruments.
Barbara Clark explained the choice to KOSU public radio, saying she wanted his things in “a place where music is still being made every day.” The Church Studio’s chief executive, Teresa Knox, put it more simply to The Country Note: there will never be another Roy Clark. KOSU reported that selected pieces from the archive would be unveiled publicly later in the fall.
Then the city made it official. Route 66 News reported that the City of Tulsa scheduled the unveiling of a Roy Clark Way street sign for November 3, 2026, at Fourth Street and Trenton Avenue, one block south of the sign honoring Leon Russell, with a free ceremony at The Church Studio. The plans called for Barbara Clark to attend, for Tulsa music historian John Wooley to emcee, and for fiddler Cody Marriott to play an instrument from Clark’s own collection. Knox’s line for the occasion was “Roy belongs where the music plays.”
It’s a fitting place for both honors. The archive sits in a working studio, not a glass case in a quiet museum, and the street sign puts Roy Clark on the same city block as one of the great Tulsa musicians of the generation that followed him. It also follows a run of earlier exhibits: the American Banjo Museum’s “America’s Super Picker, Roy Clark,” which ran through March 2017; a 2021 exhibit of about 80 artifacts at the J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma; and a 2023 Church Studio display with a bronze bust, a stage outfit and a guitar.
As of this writing, we found no new reissues, documentaries or anniversary specials tied to his work, and no news of a Hee Haw revival beyond the reruns RFD-TV brought back in 2024. November 15, 2026, marks eight years since his death.
Cultural Impact: What Roy Clark Did for Country Music on Television
Roy Clark’s most important contribution wasn’t a single record or a single award. It was showing millions of Americans, week after week for more than two decades, that country music was played by real virtuosos and was supposed to be fun.
Before Hee Haw, network television mostly treated country music as a novelty, the “token bumpkin” slot Clark described to Variety. Clark took that slot and turned it into a showcase. On The Tonight Show, he was the country picker who could sit in the host’s chair. On The Beverly Hillbillies, he was the musician who could play a hillbilly’s mother for laughs. On Hee Haw, he was the reason a lot of kids went out and bought their first guitar or banjo.
His career also built bridges the industry didn’t always notice. “Yesterday, When I Was Young” proved a country singer could carry a French art song onto the pop charts. The Soviet tour proved country music could cross the Iron Curtain. The Branson theater proved a country star could build a business model of his own. Each of those was a first or close to it, and each opened doors for the performers who followed.
He was also a reminder that the line between an entertainer and an artist is thinner than critics like to admit. Clark was both, completely and without apology, and the playing he did in between the jokes was as good as anybody’s in Nashville. As he once put it, in a line WTVR quoted after his death, “A TV camera goes right through your soul.” He spent forty years letting it.
Watch on Classic Country TV: Watch Buck Owens and Roy Clark host George Strait and Mel Tillis on Hee Haw in 1985.
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Why It Still Matters
It’s tempting to remember Roy Clark only as a television personality, a grin in a cornfield, and leave it there. That would be a mistake, and it’s exactly the kind of mistake the record exists to correct.
Behind the grin was a teenager who won a national banjo title, a sideman who played on the same bill as Hank Williams, a guitarist whose solo is still burning on Wanda Jackson’s “Funnel of Love,” and a singer who took a French song about regret onto the pop charts. He was a man who got fired for being late, admitted he deserved it, and spent the rest of his life showing up. When the chance came to carry country music to Moscow, it was Roy Clark who went.
His instruments now sit in a working studio in Tulsa, and his name is on a street there. The reruns are back on RFD-TV. The guitar players he inspired are still talking about him. None of that happens by accident; it happens because somebody decided the story was worth keeping.
Also on Classic Country TV: Traditional country has been declared dead in every decade since the 1950s, and it keeps coming back. Here’s why. https://journal.classiccountrytv.com/2026/10/21/is-traditional-country-music-disappearing/
At Classic Country TV, our goal is simple: keep the stories behind the songs alive. Roy Clark’s story is one of the best of them.
Gear Inspired by the Story
Books and Records
My Life—In Spite of Myself! by Roy Clark with Marc Eliot
Clark’s own 1994 account of the road from Meherrin to the Hee Haw cornfield, including the line about “Yesterday, When I Was Young” opening people’s eyes. Start here if you want the story in his voice.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671864343?tag=classiccoun08-20
Roy Clark: Greatest Hits (Varèse Sarabande CD)
A one-disc collection of the hits, for anyone who knows the banjo duels and wants to hear the singer who took “Come Live with Me” to No. 1.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000014WL?tag=classiccoun08-20
Banjo and Guitar Picking
Dunlop Nickel Silver Finger and Thumbpicks, Player’s Pack
The same kind of metal fingerpicks banjo players have relied on since Clark was spending his contest money. A small pack, so you can find the gauge that suits your hand.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000XZUXEK?tag=classiccoun08-20
Golden Gate BC-5 Sliding 5th String Capo
The little sliding capo that lets a five-string banjo change keys without retuning the short string. Every banjo case needs one, and nobody remembers to buy it until the night they need it.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WMJSM8?tag=classiccoun08-20
Listening and Audio
Sony ICF-506 Analog Tuning Portable AM/FM Radio
A plain, honest radio with a real tuning dial, for the kitchen or the workbench. Clark came up on Washington country radio, and some things still sound best coming out of a small speaker.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y11B6L8?tag=classiccoun08-20
Audio-Technica ATH-M20x Professional Monitor Headphones
Closed-back studio headphones at a working-musician price. Good for picking apart the solo on “Funnel of Love” note by note.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HVLUR18?tag=classiccoun08-20
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Disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, Classic Country TV may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
From the CCTV Shop
Sources
Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Clark’s Hall of Fame biography: birth in Meherrin, Connie B. Gay’s Town and Country broadcasts, Grandpa Jones and the brief Hank Williams show, Wanda Jackson’s band and the Golden Nugget, the Capitol signing, “The Tip of My Fingers” and “Yesterday, When I Was Young” chart peaks, The Beverly Hillbillies, Hee Haw’s syndication, the 1976 Soviet tour, and the Junior Samples recollection.
https://countrymusichalloffame.org/artist/roy-clark
Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Connie B. Gay’s Hall of Fame biography: WARL, the Town and Country brand, and his roster including Jimmy Dean, Patsy Cline and George Hamilton IV.
https://countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/connie-b-gay
Country Music Association (CMA)
2018 obituary: the 25-year Hee Haw association beginning June 15, 1969, seven CMA Awards with years, the Hee Haw Gospel Quartet and Million Dollar Band, “Texas Twist,” the Oak Ridge Boys on the Soviet tour, shared stages with Jimmy Dean and Patsy Cline, and Sarah Trahern’s tribute.
https://cmaworld.com/roy-clark-one-of-country-musics-most-beloved-entertainers-passes-away-at-85
The Fretboard Journal (Rich Kienzle)
“Remembering Roy Clark, 1933–2018”: the Navy Yard move, the Weymann and Silvertone guitars, Smitty Irvin, the Warrenton banjo contest and the $500 prize, the Hippodrome week with Hank Williams, boxing and the Browns tryout, the Jimmy Dean firing, the Godfrey appearance, Hank Penny, the Capitol offer, and the Tonight Show booking.
https://shop.fretboardjournal.com/blogs/dispatch/remembering-roy-clark-1933-2018
Voices of Oklahoma (John Erling interview, 2011)
Clark’s own oral history: his father’s jobs and instruments, the borrowed guitar, the $500 prize, Opry road shows, the baseball tryout, Jimmy Dean’s eight o’clock rule, Wanda Jackson and the Golden Nugget, meeting Jim Halsey, the Capitol contract, the Tonight Show and Bob Hope, the Soviet tour show count, and Branson.
https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/clark-roy/
NPR
2018 obituary: early instruments, symphony concerts, leaving school, the banjo competition, Country Style and succeeding Dean, hiring Halsey, and the Grammy nomination count.
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/15/668294131/roy-clark-hee-haw-host-and-country-music-ambassador-dies-at-85
NPR
2016 interview transcript: Hee Haw’s Canadian creators and Laugh-In model, the cast’s response to critics, and an episode count.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/461754041
Variety
2018 obituary: the Sears Silvertone at 14, his father’s advice, dropping out at 15, his music-as-salvation quote, the crossover remark, the token bumpkin line, and the Tonight Show debut year.
https://variety.com/2018/music/news/roy-clark-legendary-country-guitarist-and-hee-haw-star-dies-at-85-1203029645/
Rolling Stone
2018 obituary: Meherrin’s location, the five Clark children, his father’s instruments, the move to Washington, the Opry trip, boxing, the first-ever guest host claim, Hee Haw’s end and episode count, the Rossiya Theatre, his last major hit, and the grew-old-on-Hee-Haw quote.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/roy-clark-country-star-hee-haw-dead-obituary-756874/
Rolling Stone
“Roy Clark: 10 Great Live Performances”: The Lightning Fingers of Roy Clark track list, the 2016 CMA Awards medley with Brad Paisley, and Steve Wariner’s “Tips of My Fingers.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/roy-clark-great-live-performances-757075/
Associated Press via The Salt Lake Tribune
2018 obituary: death from pneumonia complications, publicist Jeremy Westby, the end of Hee Haw, “Malagueña” on 12-string, the Mickey Mantle memorial, and the 2004 Hee Haw quote.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/nation-world/2018/11/15/roy-clark-country-guitar/
Associated Press via FOX 5 DC
2018 obituary: Clark succeeding Dean as host, the Capitol signing year, guest-hosting the Tonight Show, and the autobiography’s line about “Yesterday, When I Was Young.”
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/roy-clark-country-guitar-virtuoso-hee-haw-star-has-died
NBC News
2018 obituary carrying the AP’s interview quotes, including Hee Haw putting his face and name together.
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/music/roy-clark-country-guitar-virtuoso-hee-haw-star-dies-85-n936696
Television Academy Foundation (The Interviews)
Clark’s 2005 interview with Karen Herman: early local TV, Ed Sullivan, The Jonathan Winters Show, weeklong guest-host stints, and his remark that television was responsible for his success.
https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/roy-clark
Oklahoma Hall of Fame
1982 inductee biography: cigar-box first instrument, Chamberlain Vocational High School, teen jobs, early pay, the boxing streak, the Browns tryout, the two years with Dean, the first country headliner in a major Las Vegas hotel, the move to Tulsa, and his 1994 quote about Oklahoma.
https://www.oklahomahof.com/hof/inductees/clark-roy-1982
Tulsa Historical Society and Museum
Tulsa Hall of Fame biography: the first paid gig, leaving school, the Opry at 17, the Las Vegas Entertainers Hall of Fame, the Soviet tour as his career highlight, Roy Clark Elementary, and the Branson theater.
https://tulsahistory.org/halloffame/roy-clark
Virginia General Assembly, SJR 409 (2019)
Joint resolution memorializing Clark: the Silvertone, the first paid gig, the banjo title and Opry shows, joining Dean in 1954, the Golden Nugget break, the 1962 Las Vegas headline return, chart totals, and the Longwood University scholarship.
https://www.legiscan.com/VA/text/SJR409/2019
Co-op Living
2010 profile of Meherrin: the post office sign and pictorial postmark, his parents’ music, the Navy Yard job and his teen years in southeast Washington.
https://www.co-opliving.com/coopliving/issues/2010/MarchApril%202010/downhome.htm
Wikipedia
“Roy Clark”: parents, Great Kills, Washington Highlands, the banjo championship and Opry years per Billboard 1985, backup work for Opry acts, Coral and 4 Star singles, Godfrey, George Hamilton IV’s show, marriages, Las Vegas and Hank Penny, the Tonight Show debut, Swingin’ Country, the 1976 friendship ambassador honor, the Boston Pops and July 4, 1984, concert, the Opry date, Tulsa honors, the airplane raffle, guitar endorsements, the Branson sale and later halls of fame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Clark
Wikipedia
“Roy Clark discography”: Capitol and Dot albums and singles with chart peaks, career totals, and Banjo Bandits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Clark_discography
Wikipedia
“Meherrin, Virginia”: the community’s location in Lunenburg and Prince Edward counties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meherrin,_Virginia
Wikipedia
“Jimmy Dean”: Town and Country Time on WARL and WMAL-TV, the Jamboree, the WTOP-TV and CBS shows, Clark’s firing and replacement by Billy Grammer, and Dean’s guest-hosting of the Tonight Show.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Dean
The Washingtonian
“Remembering Jimmy Dean” (2010): Town and Country as Washington’s answer to the Opry, with Clark and Patsy Cline among its talent.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2010/06/14/remembering-jimmy-dean/
Saving Country Music
2018 obituary: the widely repeated line attributed to Jimmy Dean about firing Clark, reported without a primary source.
https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/country-music-legend-roy-clark-has-passed-away/
Wikipedia
“Funnel of Love”: the October 28, 1960, Nashville session with Ken Nelson and Clark’s guitar solo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnel_of_Love
Wikipedia
“Right or Wrong (Wanda Jackson album)”: session credits listing Clark and Buck Owens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_or_Wrong_(Wanda_Jackson_album)
uDiscover Music
“Wanda Jackson, Queen of Rockabilly”: the Party Timers and Clark’s guitar on There’s a Party Goin’ On.
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/wanda-jackson-queen-rockabilly-party/
uDiscover Music
2018 obituary: “Come Live with Me” as his only country No. 1 and his career chart totals.
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/roy-clark-hee-haw-host-dies-aged-85/
Oklahoma Historical Society, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
Wanda Jackson entry: her Las Vegas offers from early 1960 and her nightclub career there.
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=JA002
Wikipedia
“Hank Penny”: his long Golden Nugget residency and his band’s work with Clark.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Penny
Wikipedia
“Jim Halsey”: the founding of the Jim Halsey Co., its signings of Wanda Jackson and Clark, and the 1988 Soviet return.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Halsey
News 9 (Oklahoma City)
2018 interview with Jim Halsey: meeting Clark in November 1959, managing him for 59 years, and Clark’s early sports ambitions.
https://news9.com/story/39519170/man-who-managed-roy-clark-for-59-years-looks-back-on-his-career
Wikipedia
“The Tip of My Fingers”: Bill Anderson’s original and Clark’s 1963 chart peaks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tip_of_My_Fingers
Our Brown County
2002 article whose claim that “The Tip of My Fingers” topped the charts is corrected in this piece.
https://ourbrowncounty.com/2002-november/roy-clark-at-opry/
Wikipedia
“Joe Allison”: his role at Dot Records and production credit on Clark’s records.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Allison
CTVA
Tonight Show episode guide, 1961–62: Jimmy Dean’s guest-host week in July 1962 between Paar and Carson.
https://ctva.biz/US/TalkShow/TonightShow_1961-62_JackPaar_s5.htm
Wikipedia
List of Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson episodes (1963): Jimmy Dean as Carson’s first guest host.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Tonight_Show_Starring_Johnny_Carson_episodes_(1963)
Wikipedia
List of Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson episodes (1965): Clark’s appearances as a musical guest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Tonight_Show_Starring_Johnny_Carson_episodes_(1965)
Wikipedia
List of Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson episodes (1974): Clark’s guest-host dates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Tonight_Show_Starring_Johnny_Carson_episodes_(1974)
Wikipedia
List of Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson episodes (1975): Clark’s guest-host dates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Tonight_Show_Starring_Johnny_Carson_episodes_(1975)
Wikipedia
List of Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson episodes (1976): Clark’s guest-host dates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Tonight_Show_Starring_Johnny_Carson_episodes_(1976)
Wikipedia
List of Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson episodes (1977): Clark’s guest-host dates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Tonight_Show_Starring_Johnny_Carson_episodes_(1977)
HITS Daily Double
2018 obituary: more than 15 Tonight Show guest-host spots and the Branson theater’s opening and his years performing there.
https://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=314221
Wikipedia
“The Jimmy Dean Show”: the ABC series’ 1963–66 run.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jimmy_Dean_Show
RolandNote
Fan-compiled session and TV database: the 1953 Marvin Rainwater session and Clark’s 1964 Jimmy Dean Show appearance with “Alabama Jubilee” (lower-authority source).
https://rolandnote.com/people/timeline/Roy+Clark
Wikipedia
“Rusty Draper”: Swingin’ Country on NBC with Clark and Molly Bee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Draper
Wide Open Country
Clark on The Beverly Hillbillies: Cousin Roy, his mother, the Halsey in-joke, and the episodes.
https://www.wideopencountry.com/roy-clark-beverly-hillbillies
TheTVDB
Beverly Hillbillies episode records for “Cousin Roy” and the 1969 episodes.
https://thetvdb.com/series/the-beverly-hillbillies/seasons/dvd/6
MeTV
Paul Henning writing the Cousin Roy part for Clark, and Clark’s Donna Douglas quote.
https://metv.com/stories/roy-clark-recalled-his-first-onscreen-kiss-from-donna-douglas-on-the-beverly-hillbillies
Wikipedia
“Yesterday, When I Was Young”: the “Hier encore” origin, Aznavour, Garvarentz and Kretzmer, and Clark’s U.S. and Canadian chart peaks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday,_When_I_Was_Young
Wikipedia
“Herbert Kretzmer”: the English lyricist of “Yesterday, When I Was Young” and of Les Misérables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Kretzmer
Wikipedia
“Hee Haw”: the June 15, 1969, premiere, the Smothers Brothers slot, Peppiatt and Aylesworth, WLAC-TV and Opryland taping, the 1971 rural purge, syndication, Gaylord, Buck Owens’s 1986 exit, Hee Haw Silver, Pickin’ and Grinnin’, Kornfield Kounty, the episode count and the rerun history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hee_Haw
MusicRow
2009 Hall of Fame class announcement: Clark, Barbara Mandrell and Charlie McCoy, Clark’s category, and his perfect Hee Haw attendance.
https://musicrow.com/2009/02/hall-of-fame-names-2009-class/
MusicRow
2009 medallion ceremony report: Little Jimmy Dickens, Josh Turner, Garth Brooks and Clark’s closing words.
https://last.musicrow.com/?p=11074
MusicRow
2018 obituary: chart totals, the Minnie Pearl Humanitarian Award, the Gibson Guitar Hall of Fame, Caesars Palace, Carnegie Hall and Montreux, the 1988 Soviet tour, the Opry’s 63rd member, survivors, his grandson’s death, his TV-camera line and his stage closer.
https://musicrow.com/2018/11/breaking-roy-clark-dies-at-85/
Wikipedia
“8th Academy of Country Music Awards”: Clark’s Entertainer of the Year win on February 26, 1973.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8th_Academy_of_Country_and_Western_Music_Awards
Wikipedia
“9th Academy of Country Music Awards”: Clark’s second Entertainer of the Year win on March 25, 1974.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_Academy_of_Country_Music_Awards
Recording Academy (GRAMMY.com)
Clark’s Grammy record: the “Alabama Jubilee” win at the 25th Grammys and his eight nominations.
https://www.grammy.com/artists/roy-clark/1584
Recording Academy (GRAMMY.com)
2018 news obituary with Neil Portnow’s tribute and Clark’s music-as-salvation line.
https://www.grammy.com/news/roy-clark-country-guitar-ambassador-and-icon-dies-85/
KGOU
“An Oklahoma Impresario, Country Music and the Former USSR” (2023): the Frontier Hotel origin of the Soviet tour, the State Department program, Moscow at 28 below, the move to Riga, crowds and broadcasts, and Clark’s airport question to Halsey.
https://www.kgou.org/show/how-curious/2023-05-29/an-oklahoma-impresario-country-music-and-the-former-ussr
Public Radio Tulsa
“Tulsa Remembers Country Star Roy Clark” (2018): the Soviet tour show count and timing, Halsey’s quote on Soviet attitudes, and the memorial’s closing “Malagueña.”
https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/post/tulsa-remembers-country-star-roy-clark
Public Radio Tulsa
2018 memorial announcement: the celebration of life at Rhema Bible Church in Broken Arrow.
https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/local-regional/2018-11-19/memorial-service-set-for-hee-haw-host-guitarist-roy-clark
KJRH
2018 memorial announcement: the public celebration of life.
https://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/roy-clark-s-celebration-of-life-public-memorial-wednesday
KRMG
2018 memorial guide: performers Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs and Larry Gatlin, Kenneth Hagin, Jim Halsey’s eulogy, and St. Jude donations.
https://www.krmg.com/news/local/roy-clark-memorial-service-what-you-need-know/gwoP1WR8WgAUHhdJJUpCrJ/
KTUL
Memorial coverage: Vince Gill, Larry Gatlin and Ricky Skaggs on Clark.
https://int.ktul.com/news/local/public-memorial-for-country-music-legend-roy-clark-draws-big-crowds
KTUL
Celebrity tributes: Dolly Parton and Jim Halsey.
https://www.ktul.com/news/local/celebrity-tributes-pour-in-for-roy-clark
NewsChannel 5 Nashville
Country stars react: Brad Paisley, Keith Urban and Travis Tritt, including the flood guitar.
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/country-stars-react-to-roy-clarks-death
Fox News
Tributes, including the Oak Ridge Boys’ statement.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/roy-clark-hee-haw-host-and-famed-country-guitarist-remembered-as-legend-mentor
Premier Guitar
2018 tribute: the move to Tulsa, his guitars and Heritage signature model, Brad Paisley’s method-book question and John 5’s quote.
https://www.premierguitar.com/artists/roy-clark-1933-2018
NAMM Oral History
Clark’s 2010 interview on designing his Heritage signature guitar.
https://namm.org/library/oral-history/roy-clark
American Banjo Museum
The “America’s Super Picker” exhibit and Clark’s comedy-as-self-defense quote.
https://americanbanjomuseum.com/roy-clark/
Hollywood Walk of Fame
Clark’s television star at 6912 Hollywood Boulevard, dedicated February 12, 1975.
https://walkoffame.com/roy-clark/
Family RVing Magazine
2002 Branson feature calling Clark’s the first celebrity-linked theater in town.
https://familyrvingmag.com/2002/05/01/branson-missouris-entertainment-mecca
Wikipedia
“Hughes Family”: the later Hughes Brothers Theatre in Clark’s former Branson building.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Family
Route 66 News
November 1, 2026: Tulsa’s Roy Clark Way street sign unveiling plans, Roy Clark Elementary, the Children’s Medical Center and the Tulsa Drillers, and Teresa Knox’s quote.
https://www.route66news.com/2026/11/01/tulsa-to-honor-musician-roy-clark-with-street-sign-unveiling-on-nov-3
The Country Note
August 2026: The Church Studio becomes the permanent home of the Roy Clark Archive, and Teresa Knox’s tribute.
https://thecountrynote.com/in-the-news/the-church-studio-becomes-permanent-home-of-the-roy-clark-archive/
MusicRow
August 2026 Industry Ink: the Roy Clark Archive’s move to The Church Studio.
https://musicrow.com/2026/08/industry-ink-roy-clark-diffie-classic-foundation-stowtown-records-skeez/
KOSU
2026 report on the Roy Clark Archive and Barbara Clark’s quote.
https://www.kosu.org/roy-clark-archive-church-studio
KJRH
2023 report on the Roy Clark exhibit at The Church Studio.
https://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/roy-clark-exhibit-opens-at-church-studio
Visit Claremore
“The Life of Roy Clark” exhibit at the J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum, 2021.
https://visitclaremore.org/events/the-life-of-roy-clark-j-m-davis-arms-museum/
WTVR
2018 obituary carrying Clark’s line about the TV camera.
https://www.wtvr.com/2018/11/15/roy-clark-obit
TravelOK Oklahoma Music Trail
Clark biography: the Sears catalog guitar, ice water for sore fingers, the square-dance backup work, and the banjo championships.
https://web1.travelok.com/music-trail/artist/roy-clark
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Roy Clark?
Roy Clark (1933–2018) was a country guitarist, banjo player, singer and television host from Meherrin, Virginia. He co-hosted Hee Haw from its 1969 premiere into the 1990s, won the CMA’s Entertainer of the Year award in 1973, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
Why did Jimmy Dean fire Roy Clark?
Jimmy Dean fired Clark from his Washington, D.C., band in the mid-1950s for chronic lateness and replaced him with Billy Grammer. Sources date the firing to 1955 or 1957. Clark later said he knew he was wrong, the two stayed friends, and Dean helped put Clark on The Tonight Show in the early 1960s.
What was Roy Clark’s biggest hit?
His only No. 1 country single was “Come Live with Me” in 1973. His best-known record, “Yesterday, When I Was Young,” reached No. 9 country and No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969, his only Top 40 pop hit.
How long was Roy Clark on Hee Haw?
Clark co-hosted Hee Haw from its CBS premiere on June 15, 1969, through the end of its first-run production in the early 1990s, about 25 years by CMA’s count. He continued after Buck Owens left in 1986, working with rotating guest co-hosts.
Did Roy Clark win a Grammy?
Yes. Clark won the Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance for “Alabama Jubilee” at the 25th Grammy Awards, held in 1983. The Recording Academy credits him with eight nominations over his career.
Did Roy Clark play in the Soviet Union?
Yes. In 1976, through a State Department cultural exchange arranged by his manager Jim Halsey, Clark toured the Soviet Union, making him one of the first American artists to play there. The Oak Ridge Boys opened the shows, and he returned in 1988.
When did Roy Clark join the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame?
Clark became a member of the Grand Ole Opry on August 22, 1987. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009, alongside Barbara Mandrell and Charlie McCoy, and was inducted by Little Jimmy Dickens on May 17, 2009.
How did Roy Clark die?
Roy Clark died on November 15, 2018, at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, from complications of pneumonia. He was 85. A public celebration of life was held at Rhema Bible Church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
Where is the Roy Clark Archive?
In August 2026, The Church Studio in Tulsa became the permanent home of the Roy Clark Archive, donated by his widow, Barbara Clark. It holds photographs, awards, wardrobe, papers and many of his instruments. Tulsa also scheduled the unveiling of a Roy Clark Way street sign near the studio for November 3, 2026.
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